Best of LinkedIn: Venture Capital CW 31/32 2026

Capital keeps flowing into venture at record levels, but the distribution is narrowing. Fund closings hit multi billion dollar scale even as LP dollars concentrate around proven managers. At the same time, the market delivered a hard lesson in exit mechanics, with Airtable's sale exposing how liquidation preferences can erase founder and employee returns even after a company grows. Across fundraising advice, fund structure, capital flows and community building, the underlying theme is the same: access, structure and timing now matter as much as the underlying business.

Date

August 13, 2026

Venture Capital

Thomas Allgeyer

Methodology: Every two weeks we collect most relevant posts on LinkedIn for selected topics and create an overall summary only based on these posts. If you´re interested in the single posts behind, you can find them here: https://linktr.ee/thomasallgeyer. Have a great read!

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Fundraising and Founder Strategy

Investors weigh thesis alignment and founder market fit over idea novelty, since every fund needs a 100x outlier to justify the model
Warm introductions from already backed founders skip diligence filters that cold outreach cannot, outperforming cold email by three times in one investor's internal test
Founders are advised to size rounds to specific milestones rather than maximize total proceeds raised
VCs underwrite the next funding round before the current one closes, assessing whether a startup can grow into today's valuation
Fewer than half of the roughly 19,600 investors Dealroom tracks are still actively deploying capital, making outdated investor lists a common cause of stalled fundraises

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Fund Mechanics and Economics

Cash distributions, not paper markups, are the only reliable measure of a venture fund's real performance
European waterfall structures net gains and losses across the whole fund and are seen as more LP friendly than the deal by deal American structure
A seed investment typically needs a fifty to one hundred times return multiple to return a fund on its own
Standard VC compensation runs on a two percent management fee plus twenty percent carry, with most carry realized seven to ten years after investment

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Deals, Exits and Market Signals

Airtable sold to Bending Spoons for 1.3 billion dollars, an 81 percent discount to its 2021 valuation, despite tripling revenue to 480 million dollars ARR
The Airtable sale shows how liquidation preference stacks determine exit outcomes, with late stage investors recovering capital plus interest while early employees were left with little
Bain data shows tech buyout value by funds fell from 65 billion dollars in Q4 2025 to 20 billion dollars in Q1 2026
David Beckham backed IM8 raised 1 billion dollars from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund as a repayable, revenue linked facility rather than an equity round
Forty two former Klarna employees have collectively raised over 2 billion dollars for companies they went on to found
German fintech Moss, backed across multiple rounds by Cherry Ventures, has grown into a 1 billion euro company after its founders' prior startup went insolvent in 2018

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Fund Launches, Closings and Capital Flows

July 2026 saw over 58 billion dollars raised across major fund closes, led by MGX's 49 billion dollar sovereign backed AI infrastructure fund
Twelve billion dollars was raised across 38 new venture funds in July, with five firms accounting for 62 percent of all capital raised
Twelve new European venture funds launched in July totaling roughly 2.31 billion euros announced, led by the UK with four funds
UK venture funding reached 17 billion dollars in H1 2026, with AI startups capturing 74 percent of that total
France attracted 6.2 billion dollars in venture capital in H1 2026, positioning it as the EU's second largest AI investment market
Qatar's venture funding surged 81 percent year on year to a record 214 million riyals, moving it to MENA's fourth largest VC market
Defense primes have participated in over 140 venture deals since 2024, with deal value reaching 4.1 billion dollars so far in 2026
European green transition startups raised 7.1 billion dollars in H1 2026, up 65 percent year on year, driven by AI's growing energy demands
Record H1 2026 venture dollars concentrated further by gender, geography and race, with four US cities capturing 87 percent of VC dollars in Q2
The venture secondary market's top five companies accounted for half of all trading value on Hiive in Q2 2026, with annualized volume reaching 121.7 billion dollars

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Community, Events and Networking

A San Francisco community that formed out of a Venture Institute cohort has kept meeting beyond the program as new VC firm launches nearly doubled since before the pandemic
Corporate venture capital in heavy industry is expanding even as several household name tech CVCs shrink or shut down
Corporate venture leaders debated what makes a CVC unit sustainable following the recent wind downs of PayPal Ventures, Fidelity International Strategic Investments and BP Ventures

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Thanks to Richard B., Mike S., Vahid Fakhr, Orane Carby, Nikunj K., xAvIer mejIA, Tracy Huang, Ignacio P., Petar Dimov, Leon Eisen, Mathias Bosse, Denis Kalyshkin, Peter Walker, Francis Santora, Bohan Lou, Marius Meiners, Brian Nichols, Amruta Kelkar, Sam H., Nicole DeTommaso, Nic Poulos, Iris Zhorov, Jannis M., Jeffrey Silverman, Vandit Kunapareddi, Jason M. Lemkin, Steven Pillon, Renata P., Erwan Bernard, Itamar Novick, Laura Neuman, Chris Tottman, Kayode Odeleye, Michael Schneider, Abdelkader (Abdel) Y., Guillermo Flor, Vince Nystrom, Ben Dryden, Josh Wand, Brooke Pollack, Adrienne Henderson, Adeo Ressi, Chandler Malone, Shaun Gold ‍, Markus Gatterwe, Mario Alejandro Rojas, Na Li, Ariel C., Jeff Erickson, Vidhya Govindan, Scott Law, Kevin Jiang and Navneet Kaur for contributing insights to this edition.

Find the full list of posts and voices on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/best-linkedin-cw-31-32-venture-capital-thomas-allgeyer-irkze/?trackingId=tXkd%2BJiuazcU3o2wgFV5vg%3D%3D

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Frequently asked questions

Why did Airtable's sale leave employees with so little?

Because liquidation preferences decided the outcome. Airtable sold to Bending Spoons for $1.3 billion, an 81 percent discount to its 2021 valuation, despite tripling revenue to $480 million ARR. Late stage investors recovered capital plus interest, while early employees were left with little.

Where is venture capital concentrating in 2026?

Around a few large managers and AI. July 2026 saw over $58 billion raised across major fund closes, led by MGX's $49 billion AI infrastructure fund. Five firms took 62 percent of the twelve billion dollars raised across 38 new venture funds that month. In the UK, AI startups captured 74 percent of $17 billion in H1 2026 funding.

How should founders approach VC fundraising now?

With warm introductions and a current investor list. Warm intros from already backed founders beat cold email by three times in one investor's test. Fewer than half of the roughly 19,600 investors Dealroom tracks are still deploying, so outdated lists stall raises. Rounds should be sized to specific milestones, not maximum proceeds.